6 ms·

Playboy bypasses Apple's App Store, makes a web app instead

89 points by vladd 15y ago

nextparadigms 15y ago
Amazon could to this, too, if they are forced to give all their profits to Apple after end of June. They were supposed to launch a web app reader soon anyway. They demo'ed it a few months ago. But why didn't Playboy use offline cache or something? Is it because the Mobile Safari is limited in that regard? I have a feeling Apple will hold off improving that feature for a long time.
- thought_alarm 15y ago
  This isn't some act of defiance. Playboy is doing exactly what Apple wants them to do, which is create content for the iPad. If Apple wanted them in the App Store they would be in the App Store.
- pseudonym 15y ago
  Considering the way Safari caches pages, you're lucky if you're not forced to reload a page when switching between Safari windows, let alone apps. The Safari cache size on iOS devices is cripplingly nonexistent, and I wouldn't be surprised if it only used RAM and no disk caching.
  - statictype 15y ago
    I think if you explicitly specify a cache-manifest, it caches it somewhere - I assume to disk, since RAM is scarce. The Gmail web app (along with some others I've forgotten now) seem to start extremely quickly when you bookmark them to the home screen.
    - markbao 15y ago
      The Gmail web app uses regular cache manifest offline functionality to cache the assets, but then uses Web SQL (of which the W3C has dropped the development of the spec) to store and serve up the messages.
- markbao 15y ago
  I've worked rather extensively with the offline cache, and I can confidently report that the offline cache is buggy and annoying to use, especially with MobileSafari. It's not as simple as just simply downloading content and telling the browser 'when offline, serve this up.' You need to define exactly what resources you want to cache in a file called the cache manifest. The browser will download and cache the content, and subsequent accesses to the website will serve up the cached content and assets, even if you are online. To update the cache for new items, the original cache manifest file needs to be updated. However, a pretty prevalent bug sometimes occurs when you update the cache manifest file, but MobileSafari refuses to re-cache content. In this case, MobileSafari will forever serve up the cached content and never see the changes in the cache manifest file, until the user goes to their Settings and clears the cache. I'll give you one guess as to how many will do that. Using the cache will automatically cache the index page by default, as it is the master file that is telling the browser to cache according to the cache manifest. Therefore, every time the browser accesses this file, it will be served from cache, even if you are online. That means that if you want dynamic content, you will have to make an ajax request to refresh the content on the index page. This proves especially frustrating if you have a lot of areas with dynamic content. And forget about doing logged in/logged out functionality. Furthermore, when the cache manifest file is updated and the browser redownloads all the files, the updated files will not show in the navigator until after a refresh. So let's say you updated your index page and bumped the cache manifest to tell the browser to update the index page. It will first serve the old index page from the old cache, and then serve the new index page from the just-updated cache upon the next refresh. So should the offline access store the entire history of articles? Or should it store, say, the latest accessed ones? If you just store the latest accessed issues, you would have to update the cache manifest file when a new issue has been updated, and then MobileSafari will need to re-download every single image file and asset over again. No diffs. Yuck. There are a lot of compromises you need to make when building offline caching with MobileSafari using the application cache, and there is always the risk of the occasional refusal to cache which will require the user to manually clear the application cache in the settings (few will ever do that). Offline functionality is possible, but you will need to make serious concessions and work around the problems that caching currently has. Not to mention the little space given on disk for caching. The way I tried to work around it, which is not foolproof but at least it's Windows XP compared to the Microsoft BOB of going all offline cache, is to use offline cache for assets (css, js, index file), use ajax to populate dynamic elements when online, and for the storage and retrieval of raw data, use the (now deprecated) Web SQL database. This is the approach Google uses for offline Gmail (screenshot for the curious: http://winning.markbao.com/6xyM/Screen_shot_2011-05-22_at_7.54.39_AM.png http://winning.markbao.com/6xyM/Screen_shot_2011-05-22_at_7....). This only works on iOS devices, though, and would not work for Playboy since their data isn't text, but jpegs. tl;dr caching sucks.
- statictype 15y ago
  I doubt offline storage would be remotely capable of holding all your Kindle books. And requiring an internet connection to read it isn't optimal. In any case, this new subscription service only affects repeating payments right? So Amazon could still release the Kindle without that feature and it would still work with books that you have bought from the store.
  - tomjen3 15y ago
    How much space does a kindle book take? Actually lets get some numbers for that. Gutenberg ebook 11 (Alice in Wonderland) is available in kindle format 131kb. It is a short childrens book. Gutenberg ebook 2600 (War and Peace) is available in kindle format 2mb. It is properly longer than most books though. A tale of two cities (ebook 98) is also available, 506kb. Anna Karenina (1399) is also available, at 1.1mb. Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (ebook 2488) is 551kb with pictures, 518kb sans pictures. So lets say the average book is going to be about 750kb and most people only need access to their three most recent books. That is only about 3-4mb - can't a web app store that much, client side?
    - abdelazer 15y ago
      Yes. The Web SQL database on iOS can hold a maximum of 50MB and on Android 2+ it can hold an expandable amount (in practice it's often limited for various reason to 50–100-ish).
latch 15y ago
I hope they continuously improve their "platform" and make it work, and show how they make it work. If they can be successful, increase their profits by 30% and gain freedom, I can't help but think others will be eager to follow. It'll be interesting to see how Apple responds if they do get to be a huge success/poster girl (hah, see what I did there?!)
MrJagil 15y ago
Isn't it nigh impossible for consumers to discover these web apps? They don't seem to stand a fighting chance as long as they are not indexed by the App store.
- cageface 15y ago
  The app store isn't much good for finding anything outside the top 25 apps anyway. If you want to dig any deeper than that you have to page through tons of junk by hand. I expect to see more and more apps like this move to the web. It's easier to iterate and simplifies multi-platform support. Apps will be coded to native apis because they really need that kind of access, and not just because people expect software to be delivered that way.
- whatusername 15y ago
  If you've got a brand as well known as playboy -- you've got a decent chance. Anyone else - not so much
- tomjen3 15y ago
  It is not at all difficult to let consumers discover those web apps - all you have do is to include an ad on the cover of the magazine "Get playboy for your iPad at www.playboy.com/ipad". You then make a similar note on the homepage. Now if you don't have a magazine you can advertise on, it becomes a little harder.
- jokermatt999 15y ago
  If you already have a site people go to, advertising a web app on there seems to work. Just don't it as annoyingly as IMDB.
- DevX101 15y ago
  I don't have a smart phone. What is it about iphones/androids that make it difficult to find and save interesting apps on the web? Is it that much more difficult than finding sites on a PC?
  - MrJagil 15y ago
hoggle 15y ago
Thanks to external constraints a big player is going into the right direction (for a certain set of applications where native is not really needed). Also very cool of Playboy to prominently show the historically significant "Lenna" in their advertising. Very fitting indeed. http://i.playboy.com/index2.html http://i.playboy.com/index2.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenna http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenna
- VB6_Foreverr 15y ago
  I followed your link and it said the reason the picture of Lenna (from a 1972 edition of Playboy) became significant was for its first use in 1973 in an academic conference paper on image processing. Yet it also states that Woody Allen also used the image in the film Sleepers in the same year. Woody Allen hardly got the idea from reading academic conference literature. Makes me think that the image must have made an enormous impact on its release in 1972. Makes you wonder what was cropped, although her face is very nice
- lostbit 15y ago
  Found the original (non cropped) image and more info: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~chuck/lennapg/ http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~chuck/lennapg/
- nupark2 15y ago
  > Thanks to external constraints a big player is going into the right direction (for a certain set of applications where native is not really needed). While 'not really needed' is a literally true statement, the same could be said for running water and in-home heating. Native applications are 'needed' if you want to provide the best possible user experience; Playboy is simply doing the best they can given the constraints under which they're forced to operate. This isn't the "right" direction, it's simply the only one available to them.
  - hoggle 15y ago
    I do agree with all of this but I like to think that with some collective effort we'd only be some iterations away for these kind of apps ("Shiny Real World Magazine Simulation") to evolve into something of equal, possibly even better quality? I don't talk about e.g. games or navigation apps nor am I denying the polish which went into the different native mobile frameworks/platforms. I, for one, welcome our heterogenous appscape.
83457 15y ago
I expect multiple groups (Google, Amazon, Facebook?) to eventually release a Mobile Web App Store. The app/store could even be built on some sort of common frontend framework that provides many of the similar services as iOS, purchase, in-app purchases, etc. Has any group actually announced plans for anything like this?
- ondrasej 15y ago
  An appstore (sort of) for web apps is already there: http://www.apple.com/webapps/ http://www.apple.com/webapps/
navs 15y ago
Looks great but how well does it run on Mobile Safari? Very interested in seeing a demo of this app that isn't just a video. Also very interested in knowing what tech they've used.
flyosity 15y ago
Lots of people in this thread are excited about Playboy bypassing the App Store but no one is talking about the huge user experience downsides that it brings up: * Have to sign in every time you load the app. * Herky jerky animations & orientation switching * No offline access! * Low-res images that are tough to read... in a magazine app Granted these issues could be remedied in whole or in part if the web app was built with a little more thought & care, but the fact is that it wasn't: this is the user experience people will get when they view this web app. I work on the web, and I build native apps for the iPhone & iPad. The reason I like building native apps is because the user experience is better. Everything's faster and smoother. If developers in here are putting technopolitics above the user actually using the app, then I think people need to re-evaluate why they build software in the first place.
- daleharvey 15y ago
  I am admittedly entirely biased towards web apps, but please dont say that people arguing for the web are doing so from a "technopolitics" point of view. My arguments for using open web technologies are purely based with the end users in mind, it may require some short term compromises in some areas of user experience (performance), but that doesnt mean we arent arguing for the best user experience possible.
  - flyosity 15y ago
    It "compromises in some areas of the user experience" but you're saying open web technologies present the best user experience possible? How? The App Store is one tap away. Hundreds of thousands of apps all neatly categorized and sorted a bunch of ways. User reviews right on each listing with an overall rating count that's impossible to miss. One-touch purchasing, or, if free, one-touch downloading. It downloads in the background and can be paused/resumed whenever you want. So exactly how will open web technologies (existing now, or in the future) be a better experience for users than the App Store?
    - daleharvey 15y ago
      Web apps and the apple appstore are not mutually exclusive, you can have web apps in the appstore (or the google chrome / android market / amazon app store) I am not arguing about the user experience involved in using the appstore
johnbender 15y ago
The javascript appears to be completely home grown, can anyone confirm? Assuming it is, building a mobile website without a framework, be it jquery mobile, sencha, or sproutcore, shows how unaware the developers are of mobile browser quirks. Even if it's iPad only at this point its rather nearsighted to assume they'll never want it to work on other devices.
- jonah 15y ago
  The platform is by: http://bondidigital.com/ http://bondidigital.com/ And the people who built it have done a lot of graphics heavy lifting in javascript in the past. Ian Gilman i.playboy.com: https://twitter.com/iangilman/status/71255767684100097 https://twitter.com/iangilman/status/71255767684100097 firefox panorama: https://twitter.com/iangilman/status/60395010868264960 https://twitter.com/iangilman/status/60395010868264960 deep-zoom/seadragon: https://twitter.com/iangilman/status/22789135248920576 https://twitter.com/iangilman/status/22789135248920576 Ditto Aseem Kishore: http://aseemk.com/projects/ http://aseemk.com/projects/
eslaught 15y ago
Why don't they have offline caching? Doesn't iOS's browser have (at least some) HTML 5 support?
- lukifer 15y ago
  MobileSafari has fantastic HTML5 support. Unfortunately, a few important features are buggy or crippled; offline cache is very hard to work with (as detailed in markbao's length comment above), and WebSQL tops out at 50 MB (with very UX-unfriendly alerts at every 5MB of new storage). I don't think this is intentional malice, merely simple neglect from Apple. Unfortunately, the result is the same. :(
ignifero 15y ago
It's baffling to me why Apple does this. Magazines and newspapers are troubled enough as it is, and the ipad could help those who prefer to read only once a month. How much does Apple make by this 30% rule? Do they need that money? Is it worth the negative press / publishers leaving iOS?

89 points by vladd 15y ago

Amazon could to this, too, if they are forced to give all their profits to Apple after end of June. They were supposed to launch a web app reader soon anyway. They demo'ed it a few months ago. But why didn't Playboy use offline cache or something? Is it because the Mobile Safari is limited in that regard? I have a feeling Apple will hold off improving that feature for a long time.

thought_alarm 15y ago
This isn't some act of defiance. Playboy is doing exactly what Apple wants them to do, which is create content for the iPad. If Apple wanted them in the App Store they would be in the App Store.
pseudonym 15y ago
Considering the way Safari caches pages, you're lucky if you're not forced to reload a page when switching between Safari windows, let alone apps. The Safari cache size on iOS devices is cripplingly nonexistent, and I wouldn't be surprised if it only used RAM and no disk caching.
- statictype 15y ago
  I think if you explicitly specify a cache-manifest, it caches it somewhere - I assume to disk, since RAM is scarce. The Gmail web app (along with some others I've forgotten now) seem to start extremely quickly when you bookmark them to the home screen.
  - markbao 15y ago
    The Gmail web app uses regular cache manifest offline functionality to cache the assets, but then uses Web SQL (of which the W3C has dropped the development of the spec) to store and serve up the messages.
markbao 15y ago
I've worked rather extensively with the offline cache, and I can confidently report that the offline cache is buggy and annoying to use, especially with MobileSafari. It's not as simple as just simply downloading content and telling the browser 'when offline, serve this up.' You need to define exactly what resources you want to cache in a file called the cache manifest. The browser will download and cache the content, and subsequent accesses to the website will serve up the cached content and assets, even if you are online. To update the cache for new items, the original cache manifest file needs to be updated. However, a pretty prevalent bug sometimes occurs when you update the cache manifest file, but MobileSafari refuses to re-cache content. In this case, MobileSafari will forever serve up the cached content and never see the changes in the cache manifest file, until the user goes to their Settings and clears the cache. I'll give you one guess as to how many will do that. Using the cache will automatically cache the index page by default, as it is the master file that is telling the browser to cache according to the cache manifest. Therefore, every time the browser accesses this file, it will be served from cache, even if you are online. That means that if you want dynamic content, you will have to make an ajax request to refresh the content on the index page. This proves especially frustrating if you have a lot of areas with dynamic content. And forget about doing logged in/logged out functionality. Furthermore, when the cache manifest file is updated and the browser redownloads all the files, the updated files will not show in the navigator until after a refresh. So let's say you updated your index page and bumped the cache manifest to tell the browser to update the index page. It will first serve the old index page from the old cache, and then serve the new index page from the just-updated cache upon the next refresh. So should the offline access store the entire history of articles? Or should it store, say, the latest accessed ones? If you just store the latest accessed issues, you would have to update the cache manifest file when a new issue has been updated, and then MobileSafari will need to re-download every single image file and asset over again. No diffs. Yuck. There are a lot of compromises you need to make when building offline caching with MobileSafari using the application cache, and there is always the risk of the occasional refusal to cache which will require the user to manually clear the application cache in the settings (few will ever do that). Offline functionality is possible, but you will need to make serious concessions and work around the problems that caching currently has. Not to mention the little space given on disk for caching. The way I tried to work around it, which is not foolproof but at least it's Windows XP compared to the Microsoft BOB of going all offline cache, is to use offline cache for assets (css, js, index file), use ajax to populate dynamic elements when online, and for the storage and retrieval of raw data, use the (now deprecated) Web SQL database. This is the approach Google uses for offline Gmail (screenshot for the curious: http://winning.markbao.com/6xyM/Screen_shot_2011-05-22_at_7.54.39_AM.png http://winning.markbao.com/6xyM/Screen_shot_2011-05-22_at_7....). This only works on iOS devices, though, and would not work for Playboy since their data isn't text, but jpegs. tl;dr caching sucks.
statictype 15y ago
I doubt offline storage would be remotely capable of holding all your Kindle books. And requiring an internet connection to read it isn't optimal. In any case, this new subscription service only affects repeating payments right? So Amazon could still release the Kindle without that feature and it would still work with books that you have bought from the store.
- tomjen3 15y ago
  How much space does a kindle book take? Actually lets get some numbers for that. Gutenberg ebook 11 (Alice in Wonderland) is available in kindle format 131kb. It is a short childrens book. Gutenberg ebook 2600 (War and Peace) is available in kindle format 2mb. It is properly longer than most books though. A tale of two cities (ebook 98) is also available, 506kb. Anna Karenina (1399) is also available, at 1.1mb. Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (ebook 2488) is 551kb with pictures, 518kb sans pictures. So lets say the average book is going to be about 750kb and most people only need access to their three most recent books. That is only about 3-4mb - can't a web app store that much, client side?
  - abdelazer 15y ago
    Yes. The Web SQL database on iOS can hold a maximum of 50MB and on Android 2+ it can hold an expandable amount (in practice it's often limited for various reason to 50–100-ish).

latch 15y ago

I hope they continuously improve their "platform" and make it work, and show how they make it work. If they can be successful, increase their profits by 30% and gain freedom, I can't help but think others will be eager to follow. It'll be interesting to see how Apple responds if they do get to be a huge success/poster girl (hah, see what I did there?!)

MrJagil 15y ago

Isn't it nigh impossible for consumers to discover these web apps? They don't seem to stand a fighting chance as long as they are not indexed by the App store.

cageface 15y ago
The app store isn't much good for finding anything outside the top 25 apps anyway. If you want to dig any deeper than that you have to page through tons of junk by hand. I expect to see more and more apps like this move to the web. It's easier to iterate and simplifies multi-platform support. Apps will be coded to native apis because they really need that kind of access, and not just because people expect software to be delivered that way.
whatusername 15y ago
If you've got a brand as well known as playboy -- you've got a decent chance. Anyone else - not so much
tomjen3 15y ago
It is not at all difficult to let consumers discover those web apps - all you have do is to include an ad on the cover of the magazine "Get playboy for your iPad at www.playboy.com/ipad". You then make a similar note on the homepage. Now if you don't have a magazine you can advertise on, it becomes a little harder.
jokermatt999 15y ago
If you already have a site people go to, advertising a web app on there seems to work. Just don't it as annoyingly as IMDB.
DevX101 15y ago
I don't have a smart phone. What is it about iphones/androids that make it difficult to find and save interesting apps on the web? Is it that much more difficult than finding sites on a PC?
- MrJagil 15y ago

hoggle 15y ago

Thanks to external constraints a big player is going into the right direction (for a certain set of applications where native is not really needed). Also very cool of Playboy to prominently show the historically significant "Lenna" in their advertising. Very fitting indeed. http://i.playboy.com/index2.html http://i.playboy.com/index2.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenna http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenna

VB6_Foreverr 15y ago
I followed your link and it said the reason the picture of Lenna (from a 1972 edition of Playboy) became significant was for its first use in 1973 in an academic conference paper on image processing. Yet it also states that Woody Allen also used the image in the film Sleepers in the same year. Woody Allen hardly got the idea from reading academic conference literature. Makes me think that the image must have made an enormous impact on its release in 1972. Makes you wonder what was cropped, although her face is very nice
lostbit 15y ago
Found the original (non cropped) image and more info: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~chuck/lennapg/ http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~chuck/lennapg/
nupark2 15y ago
> Thanks to external constraints a big player is going into the right direction (for a certain set of applications where native is not really needed). While 'not really needed' is a literally true statement, the same could be said for running water and in-home heating. Native applications are 'needed' if you want to provide the best possible user experience; Playboy is simply doing the best they can given the constraints under which they're forced to operate. This isn't the "right" direction, it's simply the only one available to them.
- hoggle 15y ago
  I do agree with all of this but I like to think that with some collective effort we'd only be some iterations away for these kind of apps ("Shiny Real World Magazine Simulation") to evolve into something of equal, possibly even better quality? I don't talk about e.g. games or navigation apps nor am I denying the polish which went into the different native mobile frameworks/platforms. I, for one, welcome our heterogenous appscape.

83457 15y ago

I expect multiple groups (Google, Amazon, Facebook?) to eventually release a Mobile Web App Store. The app/store could even be built on some sort of common frontend framework that provides many of the similar services as iOS, purchase, in-app purchases, etc. Has any group actually announced plans for anything like this?

ondrasej 15y ago
An appstore (sort of) for web apps is already there: http://www.apple.com/webapps/ http://www.apple.com/webapps/

navs 15y ago

Looks great but how well does it run on Mobile Safari? Very interested in seeing a demo of this app that isn't just a video. Also very interested in knowing what tech they've used.

flyosity 15y ago

Lots of people in this thread are excited about Playboy bypassing the App Store but no one is talking about the huge user experience downsides that it brings up: * Have to sign in every time you load the app. * Herky jerky animations & orientation switching * No offline access! * Low-res images that are tough to read... in a magazine app Granted these issues could be remedied in whole or in part if the web app was built with a little more thought & care, but the fact is that it wasn't: this is the user experience people will get when they view this web app. I work on the web, and I build native apps for the iPhone & iPad. The reason I like building native apps is because the user experience is better. Everything's faster and smoother. If developers in here are putting technopolitics above the user actually using the app, then I think people need to re-evaluate why they build software in the first place.

daleharvey 15y ago
I am admittedly entirely biased towards web apps, but please dont say that people arguing for the web are doing so from a "technopolitics" point of view. My arguments for using open web technologies are purely based with the end users in mind, it may require some short term compromises in some areas of user experience (performance), but that doesnt mean we arent arguing for the best user experience possible.
- flyosity 15y ago
  It "compromises in some areas of the user experience" but you're saying open web technologies present the best user experience possible? How? The App Store is one tap away. Hundreds of thousands of apps all neatly categorized and sorted a bunch of ways. User reviews right on each listing with an overall rating count that's impossible to miss. One-touch purchasing, or, if free, one-touch downloading. It downloads in the background and can be paused/resumed whenever you want. So exactly how will open web technologies (existing now, or in the future) be a better experience for users than the App Store?
  - daleharvey 15y ago
    Web apps and the apple appstore are not mutually exclusive, you can have web apps in the appstore (or the google chrome / android market / amazon app store) I am not arguing about the user experience involved in using the appstore

johnbender 15y ago

The javascript appears to be completely home grown, can anyone confirm? Assuming it is, building a mobile website without a framework, be it jquery mobile, sencha, or sproutcore, shows how unaware the developers are of mobile browser quirks. Even if it's iPad only at this point its rather nearsighted to assume they'll never want it to work on other devices.

jonah 15y ago
The platform is by: http://bondidigital.com/ http://bondidigital.com/ And the people who built it have done a lot of graphics heavy lifting in javascript in the past. Ian Gilman i.playboy.com: https://twitter.com/iangilman/status/71255767684100097 https://twitter.com/iangilman/status/71255767684100097 firefox panorama: https://twitter.com/iangilman/status/60395010868264960 https://twitter.com/iangilman/status/60395010868264960 deep-zoom/seadragon: https://twitter.com/iangilman/status/22789135248920576 https://twitter.com/iangilman/status/22789135248920576 Ditto Aseem Kishore: http://aseemk.com/projects/ http://aseemk.com/projects/

eslaught 15y ago

Why don't they have offline caching? Doesn't iOS's browser have (at least some) HTML 5 support?

lukifer 15y ago
MobileSafari has fantastic HTML5 support. Unfortunately, a few important features are buggy or crippled; offline cache is very hard to work with (as detailed in markbao's length comment above), and WebSQL tops out at 50 MB (with very UX-unfriendly alerts at every 5MB of new storage). I don't think this is intentional malice, merely simple neglect from Apple. Unfortunately, the result is the same. :(

ignifero 15y ago

It's baffling to me why Apple does this. Magazines and newspapers are troubled enough as it is, and the ipad could help those who prefer to read only once a month. How much does Apple make by this 30% rule? Do they need that money? Is it worth the negative press / publishers leaving iOS?